The Navi Mum­bai Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion (NMMC) has col­lected a to­tal fine of Rs20,000 in its anti-plas­tic drive that started last week.

The civic body, which had stopped its drive against the use of plas­tic for the past two year, re­sumed the crack­down in Vashi last week. Around nine shop­keep­ers were fined for us­ing plas­tic bags be­low 50 mi­crons.

Of­fi­cials said they will also con­duct anti-plas­tic cam­paigns in which they will or­gan­ise sem­i­nars and put up posters.

“We have al­ready started putting up hoard­ings and we will also con­duct aware­ness cam­paigns,” said Prakash Wagh­mare as­sis­tant mu­nic­i­pal com­mis­sioner, en­croach­ment depart­ment, NMMC..

Plas­tic pol­lu­tion is a grow­ing con­cern in the city. The En­vi­ron­ment Sta­tus Re­port 201415 of NMMC stated that of the to­tal 700 met­ric tonnes of solid waste col­lected in the city daily, around 15% was plas­tic waste.

Of­fi­cials said al­though they had been plan­ning to be­gin the crack­down a few months ear­lier, it got de­layed as all the de­part­ments had been tied up with ad­min­is­tra­tive work and the smart city cam­paign.

In view of the ris­ing cases of cy­ber­crime, the Navi Mum­bai po­lice has planned a cy­ber- safety week from De­cem­ber 14 to 19 to spread aware­ness about th­ese crimes and their pre­cau­tions.

This is the sec­ond time the Navi Mum­bai po­lice are or­gan­is­ing such an ini­tia­tive. A se­ries of work­shops on so­cial me­dia have been planned. The po­lice will also or­gan­ise sem­i­nars on cy­ber ter­ror­ism and dig­i­tal piracy. A num­ber of com­pe­ti­tions cy­ber­crime re­lated will be held dur­ing the week at sev­eral ed­u­ca­tional in­sti­tu­tions, hous­ing colonies and au­di­to­ri­ums.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence on Fri­day, po­lice com­mis­sioner Prab­hat Ran­jan said, “We have planned sem­i­nars on data se­cu­rity, in­tel­lec­tual property rights ( IPR), so­cial me­dia and cy­ber ter­ror­ism. Apart from draw­ing com­pe­ti­tions, there will also be sem­i­nars on dig­i­tal ev­i­dence search and seizure, bank­ing and fi­nan­cial crime and dig­i­tal pri­vacy. This year’s theme is ‘be aware, be se­cure’.”

On the need for the cy­ber safety week, Ran­jan said, “Th­ese days, most crimes in­volve use of tech­nol­ogy as crim­i­nals use mo­bile phones and the In­ter­net too. We have had to adapt to new tech­nol­ogy to crack cases.”

He added, “The cy­ber­crim­i­nals are a well-ed­u­cated lot and mostly young. It is im­por­tant that the youth do not cross the line.”

“We are or­gan­is­ing the cy­ber­safety week to gen­er­ate aware­ness among the cit­i­zens and ne­ti­zens so that they can shield them­selves from cy­ber­crime,” said Dilip Sawant, deputy com­mis­sioner of po­lice (crime).

“To­day cy­ber­crime is in­creas­ing and crim­i­nals are anony- mous in most of the cases. In­no­cent peo­ple have lost crores of ru­pees owing to ig­no­rance about safety and se­cu­rity. I be­lieve preven­tion is bet­ter than cure,” said Sawant.

In Au­gust this year, the Navi Mum­bai po­lice in­creased the strength of its cy­ber cell by 45%. As of now, the cell has a to­tal of 17 of­fi­cials — one in­spec­tor, one sub in­spec­tor, one as­sis­tant in­spec­tor and four­teen con­sta- bles.

Not only in Navi Mum­bai, Mum­bai too has seen as in­crease in cy­ber­crimes. Till Novem­ber this year, 748 cases of cy­ber­crime were reg­is­tered in Mum­bai and last year’s fig­ure was 524.

A to­tal of 169 cases were re­ported in 2013 and 62 in 2012.

The sta­tis­tics in­di­cates that max­i­mum cases in­volve credit or debit card frauds, which jumped from the 158 cases last year to 255 this year. Most of th­ese crimes took place af­ter ‘vish­ing calls’ in which a fraud­ster calls a per­son pos­ing as a bank ex­ec­u­tive and on the pre­text of ver­i­fi­ca­tion gets the card de­tails and PIN and then makes on­line pur­chases.

This modus operandi has be­come very com­mon.

The ‘ vish­ing calls’ have be­come a headache for the po­lice as un­sus­pect­ing peo­ple fall prey to fake bank of­fi­cials.